A Whole World of Good Reading

The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it’s more like having a well-read friend than a literary review magazine subscription.

‘A great present for those who love books.’

Financial Times
Slightly Foxed Issue 81

The Magazine

Each issue of Slightly Foxed  magazine offers 96 pages of lively personal recommendations for books of lasting interest – books, including fiction and non-fiction, that have stood the test of time and have left their mark on the people who write about them. It’s an eclectic mix, and our contributors are an eclectic bunch too – some well-known, others not so, but all passionate about sharing their enthusiasm for a book or author. In recent and forthcoming issues:

Adam Foulds opens The Book of Disquiet • Selina Hastings visits Don Otavio with Sybille Bedford • Flora Watkins acts as a go-between for L. P. Hartley • Olivia Potts and Julia Child master the art of French cooking • Justin Marozzi takes a short walk in the Hindu Kush • Adam Sisman faces a Martian invasion with H. G. Wells • Colin Clark introduces Derek Parker to Marilyn Monroe • Daisy Dunn and Mary Renault drink The Last of the Wine • Posy Fallowfield attends a wedding with Carson McCullers • Gustav Temple is unnerved by Patricia Highsmith • Margaret Drabble spends time with Doris Lessing, and much more besides . . .

Books

Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little hand-numbered pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and irresistibly collectable. The series includes memoirs by Edward Ardizzone, Roald Dahl, Gerald Durrell, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Helene Hanff, Laurie Lee, James Lees-Milne, Hilary Mantel, Gavin Maxwell, Jessica Mitford, Graham Greene, Eric Newby, V. S. Pritchett, Anne Fadiman, Gwen Raverat, Dodie Smith, Rosemary Sutcliff and Joanna Rakoff among others. Once the initial run of 2,000 copies of each title has sold out, the most popular of the SF Editions are then reissued as unnumbered (but still collectable) Plain Foxed Editions bound in a handsome duck-egg blue cloth.

For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve so far reissued Ronald Welch’s outstanding – and long unavailable – historical novels, BB’s classic nature adventure stories for children and Rosemary Sutcliff’s well-loved Roman and post-Roman novels, in a handsome format with the original illustrations.

  • Slightly Foxed Editions

    Slightly Foxed Editions

    Slightly Foxed Editions is a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them highly absorbing and irresistibly collectable.

    The series includes memoirs by Edward Ardizzone, Roald Dahl, Gerald Durrell, Graham Greene, Helene Hanff, Laurie Lee, Hilary Mantel, Jessica Mitford, Eric Newby, V. S. Pritchett, Gwen Raverat, Dodie Smith and Rosemary Sutcliff, among others.

  • Slightly Foxed Cubs

    Slightly Foxed Cubs

    For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman novels, favourite titles by BB and a number of Ronald Welch’s outstanding series of historical novels, in a handsome format with the original illustrations.

  • Plain Foxed Editions

    Plain Foxed Editions

    Many of the most popular titles in our limited Slightly Foxed Editions series of classic memoirs have sold out, but we are now making a number of them available in a plainer, unnumbered hardback edition. These sturdy little books, bound in duck-egg blue cloth, come in the same neat pocket format as the original SFEs and will happily fill any gaps on your shelves, as well as forming a delightful uniform edition on their own.

  • The Readers’ Catalogue

    The Readers’ Catalogue

    In addition to listing all the books we publish here at Slightly Foxed, the quarterly printed Readers’ Catalogue (which goes out to subscribers with each new issue of the quarterly) contains our pick of the best newly-published or recently-reissued titles from other publishers.

  • Seasonal & Special Releases

    Seasonal & Special Releases

    In addition to our range of memoirs, biographies and children’s books we have produced a few other seasonal books and other special releases over the years.

  • Goods

    Goods

    Whether you’re in search of a present for a bookish friend or relative, or a treat for yourself, Slightly Foxed offers a carefully chosen range of book-related merchandise, including notebooks, sturdy and good-looking book bags, cards, and bookplates.

Et cetera

Welcome to our virtual kitchen table. Here you can read articles and extracts from the quarterly magazine and our books, catch up with newsletters, find out more about our writers and artists, use the online index to hunt down articles published in back issues and seek out books featured in the magazine, listen to episodes of our podcast, and much more besides.

  • ‘Spicy titbits and an infectious ebullience’ | From the Slightly Foxed Archives
    5 April 2024

    ‘Spicy titbits and an infectious ebullience’ | From the Slightly Foxed Archives

    Greetings from Hoxton Square, where we’ve had a pleasingly busy week catching up with the many orders that came in over the Easter break for which, as ever, we send you our great thanks.
    Read more
  • ‘Sauntered homeward by unfrequented ways . . . ’ | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook
    27 March 2024

    ‘Sauntered homeward by unfrequented ways . . . ’ | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook

    Greetings from Hoxton Square, where we’ve been enjoying the longer days and lighter evenings and drawing breath after the welcome flurry of orders that followed the publication of our spring issue. Slightly Foxed Issue 81 should by now have dropped through subscribers’ letterboxes around the world and we do hope you’ve enjoyed it, wherever you are.
    Read more
  • Coppery haws and scarlet hips | The girl who grew up to be Rosemary Sutcliff
    16 March 2024

    Coppery haws and scarlet hips | The girl who grew up to be Rosemary Sutcliff

    We much enjoyed reading Slightly Foxed contributor Laura Freeman’s spread on Rosemary Sutcliff in The Times a few weekends ago. We feel bound to confess that the article was inspired by another publisher’s forthcoming paperback edition of Blue Remembered Hills but, as Laura herself wrote as a footnote to her piece, ‘I feel a sneak for saying it but this isn’t the prettiest of editions and there is a nicer one published by Slightly Foxed in clothbound covers.’ ‘Either way’, she goes on to say, ‘Blue Remembered Hills is a perfect period piece: beautifully written, brave, forbearing and sublimely entertaining.’
    Read more
  • Scrag end, Bovril and ancient eggs | My Grandmothers and I
    9 March 2024

    Scrag end, Bovril and ancient eggs | My Grandmothers and I

    Diana Holman-Hunt’s childhood was spent between two wildly contrasting households. One, in Melbury Road, Kensington, belonged to her paternal grandmother, William Holman Hunt’s eccentric widow Edith, known to Diana as ‘Grand’. The other, on the edge of the Sussex marshes, was the home of her mother’s parents, Grandmother and Grandfather Freeman.
    Read more

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Come behind the scenes with the staff of Slightly Foxed to learn what makes this unusual literary magazine tick, meet some of its varied friends and contributors, and hear their personal recommendations for favourite and often forgotten books that have helped, haunted, informed or entertained them.

From Readers & The Press

  • ‘Completely compelling and truly stranger than fiction . . .’
    2 September 2023

    ‘Completely compelling and truly stranger than fiction . . .’

    ‘As part of Slightly Foxed’s handsome series of classic biography, here is a memoir that reads more like a psychological thriller. Richard Cobb was an eminent historian of revolutionary France and a vastly entertaining writer. In A Classical Education, he…
    Read more
  • ‘The Carey novels are fantastic . . .’
    28 July 2023

    ‘The Carey novels are fantastic . . .’

    ‘The Carey novels are fantastic – I first read them in the mid ’60s and purchased the complete set from you a few years ago. They are now about to be read to granddaughters. Thank you.’
    Read more
  • ‘The joy when SF falls through the letterbox remains undiminished’
    20 June 2023

    ‘The joy when SF falls through the letterbox remains undiminished’

    ‘I’ve lost count of authors I’ve discovered through reading SF not to mention old ones rediscovered. Ursula Buchan’s essay on Wavell’s Other Men’s Flowers was particularly poignant. It was great to see Sandy McCall Smith singing your praises very eloquently…
    Read more
  • ‘Two rich recent discoveries – both published by Slightly Foxed Editions’
    4 October 2021

    ‘Two rich recent discoveries – both published by Slightly Foxed Editions’

    The Empress of Ireland is the novelist and screenwriter Christopher Robbins’s account of his friendship with the most successful forgotten Irish film director of all time, Brian Desmond Hurst . . . The book, simply, is a masterpiece, and its neglect is as inexplicable as that of its subject. Still Life by Richard Cobb, first published in 1983, is a memoir of a Tunbridge Wells childhood. Cobb, historian and Francophile, seems to have had a photographic memory, and his memoir is both an uncannily vivid resurrection of past times . . .
    Read more

‘Thank you SF for all the pleasure you give . . .

. . . and if we ARE headed for Hell in a handcart, I hope it will be well-stocked with past issues of your life-enhancing magazine.’
S. Boswell, Suffolk

Birth of a Book

‘Slightly Foxed have stepped aside from the ebook stampede to publish beautifully bound hardbacks that recall a bygone age — and sell like hot cakes. Watch Smith Settle bookbinders near Leeds bring one of their hardback books to life. Mesmerising.’

Film shot by Glen Milner for The Telegraph.

Birth of a Book
Birth of a Book
Slightly Foxed Subscription Renewal

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We’re hard at work on upcoming issues which will be full of the usual entertaining writing and excellent recommendations for good reading. We do hope you’ll consider renewing and joining the SF club for another year – or two, or three! You can do so online by clicking the button below or by telephoning the office on +44 (0)20 7033 0258

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